GrubGirl.

This is another last-minute deal that I just got in my inbox from FreshGuide, a site that sends out short-term deal emails for a variety of businesses in local markets. They’ll sometimes offer restaurant deals, and here’s a great one to try out the food at Sociale, the Italian restaurant in Presidio Heights. FreshGuide is offering $50 worth of food and drinks at Sociale, for just $25. And this deal is live for only a few days.

A few years ago when I actually attended a cooking school through HomeChef, the instructors strongly suggested that if you were going to cut corners in making pasta sauce, at least use the boxed stuff, like the Pomi Chopped Tomatoes, in place of chopping up tomatoes yourself. Any admittance of using a jar of tomato sauce or a can of chopped tomatoes was looked down upon as the ultimate cop out and sacrifice of taste and freshness.

Why? Apparently the sweet and tangy taste of tomatoes is compromised by canning it in those tin things. Jars of sauce are guilty of having lots of sugar and water added to them.

Hit with a bout lately of work leaving precious free time left to cook a nice tomato sauce from scratch, I happened on this bargain at the local San Francisco Trader Joe’s.

Their Recipe #99: Traditional Marinara Sauce jar of spaghetti sauce sells for a whopping, brace yourselves, 99 cents! Yes, that’s $0.99, less than $1 (without tax) and all that. You’ve got to appreciate how they’re able to do this, when probably the most expensive piece of this purchase is the glass jar.

Pauline’s Pizza
260 Valencia
San Francisco, CA
415-552-2050
Tu-Sat 5-10pm
Dine-in or Take-out

Next to the old Levi Strauss building lies a clean, well-lit restaurant (not pizza parlor) that happens to serve kick-ass thin-crust pizza. The secret is in the fresh vegetables that are sourced from their own gardens in Berkeley and Angels’ Camp.

Though not dirt cheap, these pizzas provide great value in a nice ambience. I tried the Pesto (Medium, $13.50), and the Italian Combination (Medium, $17.25). The pesto is drizzled onto the pie after it’s baked. I usually sprinkle a ton of chili peppers and parmesan cheese on my pizzas by default, but this one was perfect without any additional tweaking.